Yael Teff SekerUniversity of California, Davis | UCD · Department of Sociology
Yael Teff Seker
Doctor of Philosophy
About
54
Publications
35,770
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336
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Introduction
Yael Teff-Seker teaches at the Sociology Department, University of California, Davis. Her work focuses on the connections between social conflict, social psychology, and environment, including the Socio-Ecological aspects of Planning and Policy, Environmental Conflict and Cooperation, Marine Conservation, Stakeholder Involvement, Peace Education and Environmental Education. She teaches courses on conflict, peace, violence, collaboration, environment, gender, race, class, and intersectionality.
Additional affiliations
October 2007 - September 2013
March 2014 - July 2020
October 2013 - present
Position
- Accompanying lecturer
Description
- Guidance for students for their participative projects
Education
October 2008 - June 2014
Publications
Publications (54)
1. Many invasive alien species gradually become embedded within local cultures. Such species can increasingly be perceived by society as familiar and native elements of the social-ecological system and as integral parts of local cultures. 2. Here, we explore this phenomenon and define it as cultural inception. Cultural inception can greatly hinder...
The Aarhus Convention is a globally recognised benchmark for democratic environmental governance. However, no assessment exists on whether European MPAs comply with the legal standards set out by the Convention. Here, we focus on public authorities’ websites on MPAs as tools for promoting transparency, public involvement, and democratic processes....
Mismatches between natural systems and political boundaries often hamper environmental management and conservation efforts. As the number of transboundary environmental cooperation (TEC) initiatives increases, it becomes imperative to establish a systematic scale for analyzing such initiatives. In this article, we advance a TEC typology and apply i...
The NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) phenomenon, in which stakeholders oppose new land uses and activities in their vicinity, has been a subject of discussion for several decades. For energy infrastructure, it results from the apparent juxtaposition between the desire to maintain resident well-being and a healthy environment on the one hand, and the de...
We invite you, Environmental scholars, professionals, and activists, to submit an Abstract to the the 3rd Annual International Conference on Environmental Conflict and Cooperation (CECC), June 1-2 ,2023, at UC Berkeley.
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The conference will be divided into two days, with possible additional activities and excursions, depending on in-person par...
Call for Abstracts for the 3rd Conference of Environmental Conflict and Cooperation, UC Berkeley and online, June 1-2, 2023.
To submit an abstract go to: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe-JpZB3Vo_nJC8SHT6lJ9VmKu4bCIQOdB8RDBkI1VgIh8s2g/viewform?vc=0&c=0&w=1&flr=0
The quest for cleaner energy has caused governments to expand renewable energy infrastructure, including wind turbine farms. However, wind turbines (WTs) can also pose a risk to certain wildlife species, with wildlife-related research predominantly focusing on the potential harm caused to birds and bats from impact injuries. New evidence suggests t...
There is often pressure on protected area managers to enhance wild landscapes and protect biodiversity while simultaneously promoting goals such as assuring ongoing provision of ecosystem services and providing for tourist and recreational needs. In the current study, we investigate two tools that may provide different types of management-relevant...
The European COST Action “Unifying Approaches to Marine Connectivity for improved Resource Management for the Seas” (SEA-UNICORN, 2020‐2025) is an international research coordination initiative that unites an interdisciplinary community of scientists and policymakers from over 100 organizations across Europe and beyond. It is establishing a globall...
The development of cultural ecosystem services (CES) concept has progressed beyond the common categories of economic benefits from tourism and recreation, and yet definitions of CES remain vague and often shallow. It is necessary to develop methodologies that can more fully express the depth of meaning of non-material benefits humans receive from n...
Call for abstracts and workshop/symposium participants - May 31st, 2022 and June 1st
Deadline for May 31st: April 30th, 2022
https://cecc.sf.ucdavis.edu/
Providing for growing food demand while minimizing environmental degradation is a major contemporary environmental challenge. Agri-environmental schemes (AESs) are often promoted to meet this challenge by providing subsidies to farmers who adopt agri-environmental practices (AEPs). The success of these schemes depends on the ability to engage farme...
The Thinking at the Edge (TAE) application in this chapter, "Using Focusing and TAE for science: A personal account", is Dr. Yael Teff-Seker’s reflection on a research project that she undertook between 2017 and 2019, interviewing people in different countries about their experience of nature, walking with participants and asking Focusing (embodied...
Environmental concerns and natural resources can be a cause for conflict between ethnic, religious, national, and political groups, but they can also be a reason for cooperation between countries, organizations, communities, and individuals. Such cooperation could include ecological goals such as enhancing ecosystem health and preventing species or...
Call for abstracts: Cross-border Environmental Conflict and Cooperation (CECC) conference, University of California, Davis. 3 March, 2021
By definition, marine protected areas (MPAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) address spatial aspects of the ecological processes and marine features. Such a requirement is especially challenging in areas where there is no clearly defined jurisdiction. However, in these areas, assigning sovereignty and rights can be achi...
Like most ocean regions today, the European and contiguous seas experience cumulative impacts from local human activities and global pressures. They are largely in poor environmental condition with deteriorating trends. Despite several success stories, European policies for marine conservation fall short of being effective. Acknowledging the challe...
Away of the public eye, environmental peacebuilding and cross-border cooperation is taking place between Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians. The current report (in Hebrew) describes the cooperation surrounding environmental education, science, agro-environmental practices, and habitat and species conservation. The report supports the notion that...
The current article describes the peace and conflict educational approaches found in the Jewish-Israeli curricula between the years 2000–2017. Using thematic analysis, it extracts the dominant themes and messages towards Muslim, Arab and Palestinian ‘others’. The study follows 123 textbooks recommended by the Israeli Ministry of Education for grade...
Urban planning can serve a vital role in meeting sustainable development goals, and education for sustainable development (hereafter ESD) could provide future planners with the environmental considerations necessary to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The paper presents fi...
As ecosystems do not follow human-made borders, cross-border environmental cooperation can be highly effective, perhaps even necessary, for both scientific insight and conservation efforts. Several environmental cooperation initiatives between Israel and Jordan emerged since the peace treaty of 1994. These initiatives had the explicit double goal o...
Transboundary conservation has an important, yet often undervalued, role in the international conservation regime. When applied to the legally ambiguous and interconnected marine environment this is magnified. The lack of clear guidance for transboundary marine conservation from the international conservation community exacerbates this problem, lea...
1. Assessment of cultural ecosystem services (CES), the non-material benefits provided to humans by nature, is a particularly challenging activity within the complex field of ecosystem service (ES) evaluation. Assessing CES of drylands presents an even greater challenge for at least two reasons. First, assessments of dryland ES are few and limited,...
When states reorient themselves towards the seas in a relatively short amount of time, it is usually due to a top-down decision or due to merchant-class activity. However, the Israeli case is different. Since the mid-1990s, both the Israeli state and its civil society have been developing and implementing several separate new policies regarding the...
Urban planning can serve a vital role in meeting the goals of education for sustainable development (hereafter ESD); it could potentially provide future planners with the environmental considerations necessary to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The paper presents findings...
The article analyses the effect of Israel’s new maritime orientation on its foreign policy. It first demonstrates that in the last two decades Israel has changed its maritime posture in three important ways: it has developed energy dependence on offshore gas, begun extensive seawater desalination and dramatically expanded its navy’s platforms and m...
תקציר
המאמר מתאר את ייצוגי הדמויות ומערכות היחסים בין יהודים לערבים בספרות הילדים הישראלית בעשור שלאחר מלחמת ששת הימים. הוא מראה כיצד בספרות הילדים הישראלית המופיעה מיד לאחר המלחמה, ובשנים הספורות אחריה, מוצגת גישה אופטימית בנושא השלום ודו-הקיום לצד הערבים. ביצירות אלה המחברים בחרו לעתים קרובות בעיר ירושלים כמקום הגיאוגרפי בו מתרחשות עלילות רבות ה...
The article [in Hebrew] describes the representation of the main characters and the relationships between Jews and Arabs in the Israeli Children's literature in the decade following the 1967 war. In these books, there is an evident optimistic approach towards peace and co-existence. In these stories, the authors often chose the city of Jerusalem as...
The article describes how Israel's recent “turn to the sea” profoundly affects its economy, foreign policy, military, planning and education. This article compares this shift to historical precedents, offering Israel as a template for a new, cumulative model that does not conform to the existing narratives of how polities have turned to the maritim...
THE CHALLENGE: CULTURAL ECOSYSTEM SERVICE ASSESSMENT
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are inherently difficult to assess, due to their largely intangible nature. Several quantitative and qualitative methodologies are currently used for CES assessment, including monetary evaluations (earnings or willingness to pay), surveys, interviews and focus gr...
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) include recreational, spiritual, cultural and cognitive services that people receive from nature. They are inherently difficult to assess due to their largely intangible nature. We first review the main methodologies currently used for CES assessment, such as monetary evaluation (earnings or willingness to pay), GI...
Despite official Israeli government statements to the contrary, Israeli textbooks have repeatedly been accused of being prejudiced, stereotypical and racist towards Arabs, Muslims and, most of all, Palestinians. However, some significant improvements regarding peace and the Arab Other were noted in textbooks published in the later 1980s and in the...
After signing a peace accord in 1994, joint projects were initiated between Israel and Jordan aimed at enhancing environmental and resource management. We discuss four: the Red-Sea-Dead-Sea Canal (RSDSC), the joint committees of the Eilat-Aqaba municipal cooperation between Eilat and Aqaba (AEMC), a Joint Oil Spill Contingency Plan (JOSCP) and the...
במהלך שני העשורים האחרונים מרכיב הים בחברה, בכלכלה ובביטחון של מדינת ישראל
זוכה לתשומת לב הולכת וגוברת, וזאת בעיקר החל משנת 1999 ,שבה התגלה מאגר הגז
הטבעי 'נועה' במים הכלכליים של ישראל, ובאופן גורף עוד יותר בעקבות גילויו של מאגר
'לוויתן' בשנת 2010 .גילוי זה הגביר מאוד את המודעות בקרב גורמים ציבוריים וממשלתיים
בישראל לצורך בתכנון ימי, וזאת על מנת לא...
During the last two decades, the sea has become an increasingly important factor in Israeli society and in the economy and security of Israel. This trend began in 1999, the year that the Noa natural gas reservoir was discovered in Israel's economic waters, and intensified with the discovery of Leviathan in 2010. This discovery increased the awarene...
After signing a peace accord in 1994, joint projects were initiated between Israel and Jordan aimed at enhancing environmental protection and resource management. This paper discusses the Red Sea Dead Sea Canal, the Eilat-Aqaba Municipal Cooperation initiative, the Joint Oil Spill Contingency Plan and the Red Sea Marine Peace Park (RSMPP). The latt...
The current report includes findings that are the product of a study of 123 Israeli textbooks
approved and recommended by the Israeli Ministry of Education from 2000–2017
for grades 7–12. The study has examined these textbooks with a focus on instruction regarding
Palestinians, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and conflict resolution, and has found...
As of today – 2017 - the state of Israel does not have a comprehensive marine plan nor clear marine policy, especially for its deep sea. Recent natural gas findings, as well as their economic and ecological repercussions, have raised awareness to the need for such a plan. Unique considerations to the Israeli marine space such as the struggle for en...
Despite the potential environmental impact of urban planning, there is little research on Environmental Education (EE) in the context of urban planning curricula. This study follows graduate planning students' learning experience during group projects assigned as part of a planning course at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. These part...
Despite the potential environmental impact of urban planning, there is little research on Environmental Education (EE) in the context of urban planning curriculums. This study follows graduate planning students’ learning experience during group projects assigned as part of a planning course at Technion ─ Israel Institute of Technology. These partic...
A team of experts recruited by the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology - began developing a marine plan for Israel (the Israel Marine Plan or IMP), in hopes that it will fill this gap and will lead to the viable and sustainable development and management of marine natural resources for generations to come. This report includes recommendations...
Currently, the state of Israel does not have a comprehensive Marine Plan that includes its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). We believe that constructing a marine plan for Israel will improve the existing situation of marine planning and policy, and will therefore lead to the viable and sustainable development and management of marine natural resource...
As of today – June 2015 - the state of Israel does not have a comprehensive marine plan nor a clear marine policy, especially for its deep sea. However, the large natural gas reserves recently found in the Israeli Mediteranean Sea, as well as their economic and ecological repercussions, have raised awareness to the need for marine planning.
There...
Children's literature is often used not only as an instrument of artistic expression or mass entertainment - but also as a means for education or as a tool of socialisation and message-delivery to a younger generation. When children's literature attempts to explain an ongoing conflict to its readers, it reveals social perceptions regarding the mann...
Abstract
Children's literature is often used not only as an instrument of artistic expression or mass entertainment - but also as a means for education or as a tool of socialisation and message-delivery to a younger generation. When children's literature attempts to explain an ongoing conflict to its readers, it reveals social perceptions regardin...
Israeli textbooks have been previously described as a tool to advance the collective
ethnocentric Zionist narrative as well as hostility, stereotypes and prejudice aimed
against Palestinians. According to this theory, Israel’s educational curriculum
damaged its students’ attitude towards Palestinians and an Israeli-Palestinian peace
agreement. Yet,...
סיכום
בספרות הילדים שיצאה לאחר מלחמת יום הכיפורים ניתן להבחין בהתמודדות שונה עם נושאים הנוגעים לשכול ולפחד לעומת זו שקדמה לה. הצורך החברתי והציבורי להתמודד עם נוכחות הכאב, העצב ואי-הודאות שנוצרו בעקבות המלחמה בחברה הישראלית, בא לידי ביטוי בספרות המיועדת לילדים. במאמר זה נסקרו ייצוגי הפחד והשכול שהופיעו בכמה ספרי ילדים שראו אור בשנים הסמוכות לתום מ...
Questions
Questions (17)
What are the laws, regulations, zoning guidelines, etc., for preventing negative impacts of noise coming from infrastructure, especially renewable energy? Some countries have more lax environmental regulations for renewable energy, others are missing any reference to this issue because these technologies are relatively new or perceived as relatively harmless (in comparison to non-renewable energy).
I have written a review on Wind Turbine Noise effects on wildlife and the planning regulations and guidelines (and lack thereof) in Germany, California, and Israel, and looking for additional cases and countries, including photovoltaic energy impacts.
Attaching the article if it helps some of you who are interested in the field (open access). The title is: "Noise pollution from wind turbines and its effects on wildlife: A cross-national analysis of current policies and planning regulations".
What are some good sources on the connection between religion and environment?
I am developing a POE method for public parks, and wanted to know about the ones that exist, especially those that note the human (/social/recreational/aesthetic) aspect.
We are doing an international survey of how wind turbines and wind turbine noise are addressed by planning authorities and states around the world. What are the guidelines or regulations in your states? In particular, do they only address:
- Residential areas
- Other areas where people work or stay?
- Protected areas?
- Wildlife habitats?
- Certain species/ecosystems?
Official documents, articles or links would be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Yael.
I'm looking for any kind of legislation, zoning, best practices, etc. either required or recommended by the state, the EU/other federation or local government.
I'm specifically interested in marine environmental cooperation.
How many qualitative interviews did you perform in your last accepted article - for an international Q1 peer reviewed Journal?
How long was each interview?
Please also write in what specific field you published.
This will be very helpful!
Best,
Dr. Yael Teff-Seker
Hi,
I'm looking for articles or other scientific publications that address group contact theory and particularly Allport's contact hypotheses in relation to scientific or environmental projects.
Any literature on related subjects would also be helpful,
Thanks,
Yael.
How do you corroborate themes gained from Thematic Analysis?
Is it enough that one researcher reaches certain themes? Is this considered sufficiently strong evidence in terms of scientific rigor?
I'm looking for methodologies, if there are any, to assess the impact of different peace-building efforts. Is there a way to assess whether a peace-building effort is successful other than if it survives?
I am thinking that interviews and maybe newspaper or media coverage can be useful but not definitive, and perhaps not scientific enough.
I am a post-doc fellow and have used and study (in my research) two additional tools to the ones you included in your planned workshop. They include government online forums and "walking interviews". Would these potentially interest you?
Best,
Yael Teff-Seker (Ph.D.)
Technion
I'm looking for articles or books on the notion of private vs. public in landscape architecture, architecture and design. Anyone know anything about this? General insight is also good.
For those of you who perform in depth interviews as part of a qualitative or mixed-methods study. How many interviews are considered as enough in your field (and by international peer reviewed journals)?
